Somewhere on the outskirts of reason... Or where good television can be found.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Thriving Ivory 'Thriving Ivory'

My Zune and I had another triumphant road trip on Thursday and Friday. It was great having that joker along with me, because I wasn’t looking forward to just listening to the radio stations that dot the landscape on the way to Boone and back. I needed all my 4,000 songs with me. And it was a good way to cull the herd… To delete the songs that weren’t exactly topping my ice cream.

I’ve just passed the halfway mark with my Zune and that’s why I feel a need to get rid of the non-essential songs. My Zune is over half full (sounds rather optimistic doesn’t it?) and there’s so much more left to put in it. I’m already thinking about getting the 80GB model, but I’m going to wait until Gretchen II makes it to the end of her life span.

I don’t know why I fought getting one of these MP3 players for so long. I feel silly about it now with over 450 albums loaded into a player that’s slightly bigger than a deck of cards. I will try to open my mind up a little wider when the next revolution rolls through ‘cause I’m sure the opening shot is just right around the corner.

I still don’t understand what all those KB’s, GB’s, and MB’s are all about. If someone could explain it by using pints, quarts, and gallons… I think something would finally click.

Someone will tell me about something that holds 160 gigabytes and I’ll be staring at them as if they’ve just described “having all that space” by using a dead language. They usually pick up on my ignorance when I ask, “Is that a lot of space like Wyoming or a warehouse? A tablespoon or a pitcher?”

I’m had the same type of difficulty when I tried learning how to read music… Twice. I could make music following by ear and composing, but understanding it on paper was a hair-tearing out experience for the two people that tried to teach me. Including someone that taught people music on a regular basis. I would get a headache and give up on it before someone would stab me repeatedly with a butcher’s knife. For some reason, the stuff just never clicked in my brain.

Anyways… I got to downtown Boone intact late Thursday afternoon. I opened the door to find the unmistakable scent of hippies in the air. I feared that I would soon hear reggae or folk music within a few footsteps away from the safety of the KZL Van. It took only a few minutes to see my first bra-less young woman bouncing down the sidewalk.

I found a dude “selling stories” on the sidewalk. He looked like Charlie Manson… If he had suddenly stepped out of a time machine from 1971. He was friendly enough, but I kept checking for a swastika scar between the eyebrows. He was selling his stories for $2, but you couldn’t keep them. I guess there’s a capitalist buried under all that hippie piled on top. Either that or he’s worried about some kind of literary Napster stealing the sandals off his dirty feet.

I didn’t take him up on his offer because I was afraid that an interest would get me an offer up to the ranch for a good ol’ fashioned brainwashing followed by a mass murder. I could go for the orgies, but I gotta draw the line when it comes to Capital crimes.

Later on at Macado’s, intern Jessica told me that he was dude with a “well off” bank account. He was just rich and eccentric. I have a feeling that his bank account information is merely a Boone-type of urban legend, but I’ve been wrong about my feelings before. Interesting.

I was more than excited to see that Boone had a Macado’s! We used to have one in Greensboro where Solaris is now… And I miss that place! I didn’t even need a menu to order my sandwich… The Johnny Dee minus the lettuce and tomato… But I did look it over to find a lot of different items added to the menu I remembered.

They even had a Long John Silver’s up there!

I may just have to make a weekend trip up there sometime to get a better feel of the place. If they have an LJS and a Macado’s… Then maybe they’ve got something going on!